A Game of Consequences

by Shelley Smith

  He tumbled into bed at last and somewhere about seven o’clock dropped into a troubled sleep, in which again and again he was harried by some doom whose nature he could not identify …

  As for Kate, she felt as battered as an old boot. She wandered up and down the terraced garden, her thoughts wheeling unendingly round and round, charged with images of dread. The scent of rosemary and lavender clung to her skin where she had brushed against the bushes as she passed: the scent would be distasteful to her for the rest of her life, evoking in her sensations of intense misery and terror, though she would not remember why.

  *

  Kate was lying in the bath when Yvette, the maid, arrived. She had been told that the little girls were all right and were staying with friends, so she only made breakfast for two and served it on the terrace as usual. Monsieur and Madame were sitting there in unaccustomed silence when she went to clear away. They were always so gay. Yvette said blithely:

  ‘M’sieur and M’dame are missing the little ones.’

  Madame turned her head away and made no answer. Monsieur nodded to her and pulled his mouth into a kind of close-lipped smile.

  ‘They’ll be back soon,’ he said. And really (who would have thought the English were so emotional) he looked as if he were about to cry.

  Yvette was just walking back to the kitchen with the tray when he called after her to say that he and Madame too were going away for a couple of days, so she could have the time off if she so wished.

  ‘What makes you think I’m going with you?’ Kate said in a level voice when the maid had gone inside.

  ‘I don’t want you to go with me. I want you to take the car and meet me in Zurich at the Savoy Hotel.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m flying. I’ve got to get there as soon as possible, to enable the bank to get the money in time; it’s nearly a million and a half in Swiss francs. They won’t have it in their piggy-banks, you know. But I want to come back by car. It’ll be much safer. Less risk of trouble.’

  Kate said:

  ‘You’re becoming an adept at this sort of thing.’

  ‘If you’d rather not be involved I’ll manage without you.’

  ‘Supposing we don’t get back in time for Jeremy’s instructions?’

  ‘We will be back in time.’

  She stared at him in surprise. This unsmiling decisive man was someone she had never seen. The genial cajoling optimist had gone, the cheerful comforting fellow she’d been married to for twelve years might never have existed. Here was a man you could rely on to accomplish what he set out to do, a man as cold and hard as iron. Had he been there all the time, hiding under the gentleness arid good-humour, she wondered? It was as though someone had turned him inside out. Here was a person you could trust but not like, whereas the man she knew had been just the reverse.

  She would do what he asked of her. She could do no less. This was for the children’s sake.

  The children, yes. Dinah and Biddy, poor little creatures, felt worse not better as time went by. They were still shaken intermittently by storms of weeping. They were terrified beyond words by their predicament. They could not understand what had happened to them, it had all happened so swiftly. One moment they’d been sitting there kicking their legs, bored to death, and the next, Jerry was hurriedly telling them he had to leave them and he’d be back quite soon, in a few days … They could no longer quite remember his exact words, which made it worse.

  Why should Jerry, their dear kind Jerry, have abandoned them in this horrible place where everything was so strange and incomprehensible? Why had Mummy and Daddy gone away without telling them? They felt uncomfortably like Hansel and Gretel.

  It is especially dreadful to find oneself amongst a whole mass of people who did not understand a word one said. It made one feel quite desperate, for what is the use of asking questions if no one knew what one was saying?

  Grown-up faces bending over one and talking and talking: sometimes imperatively, sometimes in a patient gentle tone that seemed to pity them. It was hard to say which was the more frightening.

  The other children all wore blue cotton dresses and had their hair cut like Japanese dolls, which made them all look oddly alike. They came up and touched them, chattering away, shouting and interrupting one another. They tried to communicate with the little English girls, saying: ‘Hullo! Goodbye!’ and bursting out laughing. Alas, Dinah and Biddy shrank from their exuberance. One or two of the children made hideous grimaces, perhaps in an attempt to make them laugh, but Biddy only shrivelled up closer to Dinah and clutched her hand more tightly.

  There was a bell somewhere which kept uttering its metallic call. And then two of the children, one named Jeanne and the other Thérèse, would seize Dinah and Biddy by the hand and drag them off. Sometimes into a classroom where they were left to sit on a bench at the back of the class. Sometimes to a big hall full of long tables and a fearful din of clattering feet and scraping chairs, where there were large platters of bread cut in chunks down the centre of the table and in front of each place a bowl of some vaguely pale brown liquid. Or into a sort of church-looking place where everyone kept kneeling down and muttering and standing up, in a way that was bewildering to follow. Or into a place outside where the children all ran about screaming, while Dinah and Biddy stood together in a corner and watched it as one watches the events in a nightmare.

  And supposing, Dinah would think, that no one ever came to fetch them away. They would have to stay here for ever and ever … At which point Dinah would break once more into silent weeping, and Biddy would begin to sob too, in animal sympathy, bawling that she wanted her Daddy, she wanted her Mummy and Daddy …

  Sometimes some of the older girls would try to comfort them. Once one of them put a hand on Dinah’s shoulder and said with a sort of rough kindness:

  ‘Faut pas pleurer. Nous aussi nous sommes orphelines. Nous sommes toutes orphelines ici. Pas de père, pas de mère,’ she added more explicitly.

  A consolatory remark which perhaps it was as well neither Dinah nor Biddy understood.

  *

  Before leaving for the airport, Tom prudently telephoned the bank in Zurich to advise them of his advent and made an appointment with the Bank Direktor. On arrival he went straight there, and having disclosed the grim nature of the crisis and made the manager understand the extreme urgency of the situation, he added apologetically:

  ‘I wish it had been possible to give you more time, Herr Krausemann, but one cannot argue with kidnappers: it’s rather like having a gun at one’s head.’

  ‘Of course. I understand. To raise a million and a quarter of currency at such short notice is not easy, but we shall manage it, I am sure, Mr. Ransome. Do you want Fr.1000 notes?’

  ‘Just whatever you can get. As long as they’re wrapped in bundles, for easy counting if the — recipient should want to check them.’

  The rest of the day was spent in empty wanderings about the town, simply to keep moving because he could not bear to be still.

  Kate arrived next day. He looked at her in some surprise. She looked pale and tired but was dressed as for some grand luncheon engagement in her smartest Gilot hat and Yves St. Laurent two-piece.

  ‘What on earth are you dressed like that for?’

  She regarded him with raised eyebrows.

  ‘You could hardly expect me to wear a sun-hat and a cheese-cloth frock with gold jewellery worth five thousand pounds, and I certainly wasn’t going to leave it all in the villa.’

  (Tom had given her three exquisite pieces of modern jewellery: a brooch, a neckpiece, and a bracelet of very elegant design set with stones.)

  ‘How sharp of you.’

  ‘The car and the jewellery happen to be all we shall now possess. I was not very likely to forget that.’

  ‘That’s more than we had before,’ he said.

  She favoured him with an ironic glance but said nothing.

  ‘Did you have an easy trip?’

  �
�Quite, thank you.’

  ‘Where did you spend the night?’

  ‘Geneva.’

  ‘I hope you got some sleep.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Because if you’re not too fagged I think we should start back as soon as we’ve got the cash.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No point in hanging around.’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘I’ll drive.’

  ‘All right.’

  That was the style of it now. Deadly. Only the baldest essential remarks were exchanged. Not like strangers, because strangers would have had more to say.

  The whole long journey was conducted in almost total silence except for the chatter of the radio, which itself was shut off every time it turned to music. (It isn’t true that music soothes the savage breast. The savage breast, the breast in anguish, finds the melting sounds too painful to be endured.)

  Tom drove hard all through the night: neither of them wished to spend a night on the road together. When they arrived back at the villa, Tom took off his suit and slept for a couple of hours. Then he had a shower, put on jeans and a T shirt; whereas Kate merely pulled off her hat and lay back motionless on the chaise-longue with her eyes closed, waiting for the phone to ring.

  Tom carried the suitcase full of notes into the bedroom and emptied the contents on to the bed. Then he packed the bundles of currency into two plastic shopping-bags, one imprinted with the name MARTINI and the other with the name CINZANO. Though the packets had been divided equally, the bag called MARTINI was slightly heavier than the bag called CINZANO. He carried them to the car and came back to the living-room. Kate appeared not to have moved. He said softly: ‘Are you asleep?’

  ‘No.’ She said in a deep dull voice: ‘Why doesn’t he ring?’

  ‘He will. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Yes, maybe. I don’t mind.’

  ‘How about some strong black coffee laced with brandy?’

  ‘All right.’

  As they sat there sipping their drinks, Tom said tentatively:

  ‘Are you coming with me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ After a pause he added: ‘Kate, once all this is over — ’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about that now, please, Tom.’

  ‘All right. I only wanted to say, after all these years surely we can come to terms with one another and take each other as we are, can’t we, Kate?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to get this over with.’

  At that moment the phone rang and Tom sprang to answer it. He said: ‘Yes … Yes. I’ve got it … All right, where are you?’ He signed frantically to Kate for pen and paper to write down the directions. ‘Just a minute … La Napoule, yes … Turn right at the Avenue Beaucaire … over the bridge … one kilometre from St. Pierre … A screen of poplars on the left … Yes, I’ve got that. Right.’ Tom replaced the receiver. He looked at Kate. ‘Well, this is it. We can go now. They’ll be waiting for us.’

  ‘It’ll be dark.’

  ‘Yes.’ He slipped on an ancient suede jacket. ‘Come on.’ Kate jammed on her hat and put the paper of directions in her handbag. They left, locking the door behind them.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Tom said, sliding into the seat and turning on the ignition.

  La Napoule lies seven kilometres beyond Cannes. Following the instructions they’d been given, Tom turned right at the Avenue Beaucaire, which took them over a bridge, along a secondary road past the small ill-lit village of St. Pierre, where it crossed a main road and meandered on, with the ground running darkly away on either side.

  ‘I think we’ve taken a wrong turning somewhere,’ Tom muttered anxiously.

  ‘No, look … over there! You can just see the poplars against the sky and something white … a van or caravan set back about thirty metres … ’

  Tom drew up so that his headlights lit up the vehicle. It was a caravan, and immediately it responded by switching on its own headlamps.

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’ He deliberately left his suede jacket on the seat so that he could be seen to be unarmed, and picked up the carrier-bags. He banged shut the car door and set off across the sward towards the white caravan beside the screen of lombardy poplars. A golden light shone through the little window.

  ‘Eskdale?’ he called.

  The door opened.

  ‘Come in,’ Eskdale said. Tom climbed in.

  Eskdale swiftly stepped back behind a table which effectively cut off half the caravan, at the far end of which were the two little girls sitting hand in hand on the bunk, with small white faces and big staring dark eyes.

  They seemed not to recognise him. As though they couldn’t be sure he really was their father. The sight of his lovely bouncing girls so peaked and scared and quiet, brought a painful lump to Tom’s throat. He was shaking with pity, with rage and pity. He had a passionate longing to snatch them up in his arms and carry them off to safety, and started forward to do just that; only that Eskdale put out an arm to bar the way.

  ‘The money first.’

  ‘It’s here,’ said Tom, ‘you can see for yourself it’s here. Let the children go now.’

  ‘Not till I’ve checked the money, my friend.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Tom muttered between his clenched teeth, ‘What have you done to them? They’re scared to death.’

  ‘They’re all right. They’ve come to no harm. It won’t hurt them to wait another few minutes. Hand the stuff over.’

  ‘Daddy?’ Dinah said in a queer strained voice.

  ‘It’s all right, my darlings. I’ve come to fetch you away. I’ve just got to settle some business with Jerry first. Don’t cry, please, it won’t take long, I promise. And Mummy’s waiting outside in the car.’

  Tom spilled out the contents of the Cinzano bag.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Swiss francs. What did you expect? Gold sovereigns?’

  ‘Are you telling me there’s a million and a quarter in those two bags?’

  ‘I said so, didn’t I? Do you want to count it?’

  ‘You bet I want to count it, buddy. I’d count it if it was handed to me across the counter of a bank. I’d be a sweet fool not to after what has passed between us already. And I’ll enjoy it, believe me. They’re all for different amounts,’ he commented irritably, turning over the bundles.

  ‘I had to take what I could get. They’re all in packs of twenty, you have only to stack them according to denominations and write the figures on a bit of paper.’ Tom watched him for a moment sorting them and then looked across at his children and began to signal to them with his eyes, glancing repeatedly towards the door; then rounded his eyes and pursed his lips as though to warn them: Not yet!

  He began emptying out the contents of the Martini bag in neat piles. The sound of a car revving-up made him turn for a moment towards the window. He guessed that Kate — sensible girl — was turning the Mercedes around.

  Eskdale glanced up with a sharp suspicious look:

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Only Kate reversing the car. For heaven’s sake get on with it, man. We don’t want to be here all night.’

  Eskdale, totting up the figures he had scribbled down, straightened up and stared at him in outrage:

  ‘There’s only 622,000 francs here!’

  ‘That’s right.’ Imperturbably Tom went on unpacking his carrier-bag.

  ‘That’s only about £150,000.’

  ‘Yes. That’s half. The other half is here,’ he said, laying down the last of the packets.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at! You said it was a million and a quarter.’

  ‘So it is.’

  ‘In Swiss francs. Not pounds.’

  ‘I never said it was pounds, did I? I told you I hadn’t got that amount and never had. I can’t help it if you didn’t want to believe me.’

  ‘You twister! You double-crossing little crook … ’
Eskdale rose from the stool on which he was perched. He looked immensely tall against the low ceiling of the caravan, a formidable figure, his shadow darkening all the space behind him. His expression was menacing.

  Tom withdrew his hand from the empty bag and, like a magician, in it was a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson. He’d purchased it that lonely restless day in Zurich, while waiting for Kate. He couldn’t have said what had made him buy it. Perhaps as a defence, perhaps as a threat. There must have been something at the back of his mind or why had he brought the cartridges too? He had loaded it before he left. Now he cocked it and levelled it point blank at the other.

  ‘Dinah, take Biddy’s hand and go now. Quick as you can. Run straight to the car. I’ll be with you in a minute. Hurry!’

  He heard them slither down and scuffle to the door. There must have been one second when Tom took his eye off Eskdale as Dinah struggled to open the door. Time to flash them a reassuring smile before they scrambled out into the darkness beyond and the door swung to. But in that moment Eskdale had reached behind him, groping on the worktop beside the tiny cooker.

  They stumbled over the rough grass. Kate flung open the car door and dragged them in. They hurled themselves into her arms and she held them to her so tightly they could hardly breathe. Kate could hardly breathe for the anguish of this moment.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about any more,’ she promised, and brushed the tears from her eyes.

  There was an extraordinarily loud noise like an explosion somewhere and at the same time the car began to bump across the grass …

  ‘Mummy, Mummy,’ they cried. ‘Wait for Daddy!’

  But she took no notice. It was as though she didn’t hear.

  They pulled at her, struck at her frenziedly with their little fists: she must wait for Daddy! But she seemed as oblivious of their blows as to their imploring shrieks. They mustn’t go without him, he was in there … But the car raced on through the night unheeding …